How Did this Vegas Hotel Executive Use His Power to Serve His Employees and Customers? (Mike Leven)

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories. And up next, Mike Levin, who was the president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands and an all-around hotel superstar, one of the great hotel years of all time. More important, a personal friend and a wise man. And wisdom, my goodness, in short supply these days. And he transfers his wisdom through story. A Jewish guy who loves storytelling like almost nobody else. Up next is Mike telling a story about how he puts his customers in charge.

00:00:46
Speaker 2: I can tell sales stories really for the rest of the time we have together, but at the end of the day, I really like the customers, just like my father. My best lesson was very early. Went, and I think it’s in my book. It talks about the New York State Savings Association. It’s a guy named Bill Bodine, and Bodine was his last name. It was my first booking. He said, “Funny you’re in here.” He said, “Did I need a lunch for sixty people?” He said, “Can you find out?” I said, “Sure.” It was around the corner. He was on Fifth Avenue, too, on the corner. I went back, checked the book with a guy, a banquet guy, and we had a space. So we hed with the Madison Room, with the Rosehill, held sixty people for lunch. I went back to him, didn’t use the phone. You never had the cell phones or anything. It went W.W. Walked back, said, “I got the room for you,” and whatever. “It’s four dollars and twenty-five cents for lunch for whatever was at that time, plus catuity.” And he said, finally said, “I need ten tables or six.” And I said, “Okay.” Now we doll. I know ten table. Do I didn’t know ten tables of six? I didn’t know twelve-inch round, twelve-foot rounds from ten-foot rounds. I didn’t know, and no one taught me anything. So I, I, I, I go back and I say to Herbert, “I’m in the back.” I said, “I need ten tables of six.” “Can’t do it.” “But do you mean you can’t do it, my first booking? I mean, you can’t do it? What do you mean, you can’t do it? Can’t the union? You gotta have tables of ten.” I go back to see Bodine, and Bodine says to me. I said to him, “You gotta have tables of ten.” He looked at me like I’m looking at you. He said, “Mike, I’m the customer. I want ten tables or six, or you’re not getting the business.” I said, “Mr. Bodine, I will try to work it out.” So I go back. I have to understand, I don’t know anything. I go back to Hermine, and I said, “Herb.” I said, “Why do I have to have? Why does the union want tables of ten instead of tables of six?” He says, “Because they have to get the gratuity from ten people per table.” I said, “What’s the gratuity?” He said, “Fifteen percent.” I figured out fifteen percent on four dollars and fifty cents is sixty cents, right? So, ten tables, sixty cents on two extra people is a dollar twenty? Correct? And I don’t know if my mask. I’m doing it in my head. Okay, the dollar twenty. I said, “I’ll tell you what.” “Suppose I get the customer to pay a dollar twenty for every person for sixty people. Does it make a difference whether they have tables or six or tables of ten?” He says, “No, they’ll take it for the money. The money’s the same.” Said, “Let’s do that.” He says, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I go back to Bodine. I said, “The bust of the day, listen, I can’t short the waiters a dollar twenty-two forty, two dollars and forty cents a table. So you got to, if you pay me the extra, I can do the tent dables.” He said, “It’s a deal.” So I made my first deal to get my first booking. But here, the lessons—that it’s so easy for people to turn the customer down, to play the game their way rather than to play the game for the customer. And I can tell you, for my whole career, making it work for the customer came up almost all the time, even later in the Holiday Inn days and the Days Inn days, because the franchise. I’d say to people, “Who’s the customer in a franchise operation?” And you know what they all say, most of them, “Well, the person who buys the product in the restaurant or in the hotel is the customer.” I said, “You’re wrong.” “The franchise is your customer. If you make that person happy, he or she will make the customer happy.” If they’re happy, and if they make the customer happy—the end-user happy—then we’re going to be happy because we’re going to be collecting more royalties. Isn’t that the way it works? Well? But that all came from trying to make it work in the first, first deal I ever made. And you know, after that, Lee, I always wanted to be in charge, because the basic situation in business, or in everything, is the people who want top, wanted to be done their way. But when they want it to be done the customer’s way, they are ultimately successful. I made some marketing decisions along the way that was sort of customer-oriented. I think I did that. But when I was fully in charge at the top of it, and then when I was Executive EP of Operations at Americana Hotels and had the whole company, I could, I could make those decisions, or at least teach people to make those decisions, you know, because they knew what my philosophy was. And then ultimately, as president of Days Inn and Holiday Inn, in these kind of situations, I could eventually develop that particular situation. So I think that the difference for me, from what I see from many other executives or many other people, is that my power—if you had power—was really to make it happen for the customer, not to make it power for power’s sake, for myself, because the ultimate benefit of the company is to have satisfied customers, and if you don’t have satisfied customers, you can’t be successful for long. And what you see when you read and see what goes on in business in general, or in life, even in politics, it’s no difference, you know? I mean, how in politics do you service your constituency? The successful politician is the one whose constituents he makes happy. That can be positive a negative, depending up on what makes it happy. But the point is, making them happy means that they’ve both for him and, and or her, or it. So, my… And you know, it’s funny, because I always treated suppliers the same way, and I always treated the hotel media the same way, even though we were buyers of their product. I always looked at them like, like, “How can I help them to be successful?” I always treated employees the same way. And so I think, I think that if you, if you, you know, if you summarize all this stuff and roll it into a little ball, I think, I think, if my success—if I’ve had any—has been the number of people, both customers and employees, that have gained an advantage or gained something because I was involved that benefited. I think ‘gains’ maybe is a bad wad. Benefited from the involvement with me.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Mike Levin. By the way, go to OurAmericanStories.com, put in his name, and I love so many of the things he shares with us. So many of the stories about people. And in the end, businesses are about people. The local restaurant. Look, you go in two or three times to that local restaurant in a row, and they serve you up a bad mood or they’re rude, and ten years of dedication to that restaurant are over. It is about the customer, and it’s about choice, and that is the free enterprise system. The customer gets to choose. Leave it to the guy at the top. He’ll just say something like, “Ten tables of six.” “That’s just the way we do it.” And it was beautiful that the guy, the customer, said to Mike, “I want ten tables or six, or you’re not getting the business.” This is what makes, in the end, free enterprise home. The customer gets to choose. Don’t take care of the customer? There goes your business. Mike Levin’s stories, my storytelling, a hotel legend and, in the end, a friend. And Mike will forgive this—a real mention: his storytelling. Here on Our American Stories.